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Chapter 1

Into the Forest

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      Jake walked along the trail, his eyes wide open, his ears receptive to every sound, remembering that he always used to think of this as the scary part of the redwood forest. Here, the tall trees, some of them almost as old as Western civilization, grew thick and close together making it difficult for the late afternoon sun to penetrate.

    Long before the plane crash, before the death of his parents and the onset of his great pain—the demon Blackness—he used to walk into this part of the forest pretending he was on a great adventure, imagining he was on his way to finding a magic castle or a bandit’s hideout. He and his father took many walks through here, so even though it was dark, a little foreboding, and he always felt a little nervous, he knew it was safe. There were no wild animals, at least none presenting a danger to him. Yes, the mountain lions were coming back but they tended to stay higher up in the hills, and there had been no bear sightings in more than fifty years.

      On their many camping trips up into the Sierras his father taught him about nature and survival in the wilderness. Often Jake’s father seemed remote, as if he was always caught up worrying about work and money, but he was very attentive and present during the father-son times they spent outdoors. They loved their special time together, calling themselves the J and D team, the Jake and Dad team. Once, they took a special five-day trip to the Lost Coast. It was to be their last trip together.

      His father often said what he liked best about being a Dad was getting to raise Jake in the way he wished he’d been raised by his father—through Jake he got to experience the childhood he always wanted. This knowledge made Jake feel pretty special.

      His relationship with his Mom was special, too, although as he got older he found some of her habits and mannerisms increasingly annoying. Especially bothersome were her nervousness, her controlling ways, and her smoking, but Jake always felt loved by her.

      Because his parents were not getting along very well the last couple of years, she wasn’t always in such a good mood. Jake liked being around her when she did feel good, for then she was very much her old, fun-loving self.

      Both parents taught him a lot about love, but it mostly came from his Mom. As he continued walking through the redwoods another memory surfaced. From around age three or four, every so often, his mother and father held him close between them, putting their mouths right up against his ears, his Mom on one side and his Dad on the other, whispering, “We love you… We love you… We love you….”

      Their whispering created a tickling-like vibration inside his ear canals which always made him giggle. The sound travelled right into what seemed like the center of his brain. When they finally let him go or he managed to wriggle out of their arms so he could run off and play, he still felt the words, “We love you…” reverberating inside his head.

      It was his mother’s idea. She was always thinking of new ways to love him, to show him how much he was loved. His Dad loved him too, of course, but he was the more practical one, as men often are. Jake often thought his mother would be happy just sitting around all day sharing love. She was a very emotional woman and wore her heart on her sleeve.

      His Dad was the opposite of his Mom in many ways. For example, he didn’t show a lot of emotion. And, Jake seemed to sense his Dad didn’t know how to handle his Mom much of the time, especially when she was in an emotional state, which was quite often.

      Even Jake didn’t know how to deal with her. Once she exploded in anger about a mess he left in the kitchen. Seeing the look of shock on his face she broke down crying and was very apologetic.

      She explained she was starting to go through menopause, and it sometimes felt as if there was someone throwing pots and pans around inside her body. Jake tried unsuccessfully to imagine what it might feel like. He wondered if his mother was exaggerating. After all, she had a tendency to be dramatic by nature. But then one day when she completely lost it, there was something about her vulnerability, her child-like openness, which made him realize there actually was some powerful biological force active inside her, a force which had her in its grip.

      Feeling sorry for his Mom helped take the edge off his anger toward her whenever she pissed him off. This mostly happened during attempts to control his behavior, like telling him what he could and could not do. It also made Jake feel glad he was male, knowing when he got to be his mother’s age, he wouldn’t have to deal with menopause.

      When Jake was younger, his father, in moments of frustration, occasionally confided in him, “You know the reason why your mother and I fight so much is because she is so unreasonable. We can’t have an adult conversation, rationally talk a problem through in a grown-up manner, and then come to a sensible solution. Your mother always loses it along the way. She gets angry and reactive, blaming me for whatever’s going wrong.”

      Jake listened to his father and knew what he meant because he, too, knew how his mother was. Yet he never knew what to say in response to his father's frustration. He could never come up with any helpful advice. Jake thought it was something his father should work out with his mother, maybe through therapy or something. Yet his parents had already seen a number of therapists over the years and none of them seemed to really help.

      As Jake turned fourteen his parents were still together. They made it this far as a couple and as a family unit, so maybe the therapy did help. Since Jake was now much more independent they decided it was time for a second honeymoon, which was the reason for their flight to Mazatlan.

      The idea was to take ten days away from parenting Jake to rediscover what it meant to be a couple again. They would swim in the warm ocean every day, lie on the sand and soak up the rays, eat fresh, inexpensive seafood, and drink margaritas every night. And, as his father said with a wink, “Take advantage of those hot, tropical nights,” which of course meant they would have sex—another thing Jake didn’t particularly want to hear from his father.

      The thought of his parents having sex, lying naked together and doing it with each other made him squirm inside. Sex was something Jake didn’t want to think about or deal with yet. His parents had talked to him about it several times over the years, educating him so he’d know all the facts and could make responsible decisions when it came to the birds and the bees.

      But there was still something very mysterious about it. Sex was a doorway into what seemed like a vast, unknown world. He didn't doubt it was a world filled with many pleasures, but it was also fraught with equally many potential responsibilities and problems. At some level Jake knew that entering the world of sex would mean leaving the magic of his childhood behind, and he wasn’t quite ready for that. True, he was no longer a child, but he was reluctant to say goodbye to elements of his childhood, especially his inner fantasy life.

      His thought was to wait at least another few years, maybe until he was eighteen, before he had sex with a girl. If, of course, he ever got a girlfriend, which he currently did not. The truth was, he wasn’t very comfortable with girls. He didn’t know how to talk to them. They seemed to live in a different world. In any case, comfortable with girls or not, he didn’t feel any need to hurry into the realm of sex. The whole idea of it was just too damned complicated at this stage of his life.

      Especially now, given all that had happened. Jake stopped walking and stood silently among the dense redwoods. Normally these trees gave each other some space, but here they crowded in on one another. When he looked up all he could see were masses of long, straight branches sticking out from the tall tree trunks, and then the thick green foliage. Hardly any blue sky was visible. It was dark and dank. The stream, now next to the trail, contributed to the ground being soft. He could smell the rotting undergrowth. It was almost swamp-like.

      Breathing in deeply, he sighed. Brushing his long, fair hair away from his forehead reminded him he needed a haircut, and since all the guys wore their hair very short and clean, he made a mental note to get one. Only the nerds and geeks let it grow long and unkempt. Since Jake loved computers and video games and entertained vague ideas about being a programmer after he went to college, he identified with being a geek. A few of his friends were geeks, but he didn’t want to be labeled as one. In fact, he didn’t like being labeled anything.

      But now he was labeled. Now he had a label he suspected would follow him all his life, or at least for years to come. It was the one label no kid ever wants: orphan. Because of the plane crash he was now an orphan. What a strange word that was, right out of a Charles Dickens novel. His father introduced him to Dickens, to Oliver Twist. Orphan. Jake would give anything to be labeled something else, anything else, but not orphan. He wouldn’t even mind being labeled “queer” or “faggot,”  just about the two worst labels any teenage boy could have, even in liberal northern California, if he could just have his parents back. But it wasn’t going to happen. It was never going to happen.

      Even now, he couldn’t believe they were dead. As he had many times every day for the past year, he thought about his mother and father. They had called him from their hotel on the last morning of their vacation to tell him how much they loved him and how much they were looking forward to seeing him again when the plane landed at San Francisco airport early the same evening. They talked about taking him to a special dinner on the way home from the airport, at his favorite Italian restaurant in Occidental, the small, west county town where they lived.

      He remembered how, just before they hung up, his Mom said to him, “Imagine we are standing on either side of you, honey, just like when you were little, with our mouths pressed up against your ears…”  He could hear her passing the phone to his Dad, and then his Dad’s voice whispering softly, gently, “We love you… ,” and then his mother’s voice back on the line again, “We love you…” and then his Dad one more time, “We love you…” and then finally his Mom, “We love you…”

      Jake had laughed, and said he loved them, too, which he did. He was already missing them and looking forward to having them back home. Then he told them to have a safe flight and hung up before his Mom could say anything more. He wanted to get back to playing the new Nintendo game they had bought him as a going away present

      It was to be the last time he ever spoke to them, the last time he ever would ever speak to them. He now wished he had not hung up so quickly. He now wished he had not been so “addicted,” as his father often said, to his Nintendo. But it was too late. It was too late to change anything.

      Why did this happen? Why did it happen to his Mom and Dad? Why did it have to happen to his parents? Why did it happen to the eighty-three other people on the flight back from Mazatlan? Why? Why? Why?

      The questions rang inside his head as they did so often over the last twelve months, causing Jake to feel the Blackness closing in on him. He started walking again, going deeper into the redwoods, as if, by entering the darkness of the forest he could somehow leave his own darkness behind, this Blackness growing inside his head. His head began to hurt again as if gripped in a vise. It seemed like it always hurt these days.

      The question “Why?” started echoing inside him, inside the Blackness. As usual, it became louder and louder, echoing again, and again, and again until the question became a scream so intense it felt as if his head was going to split and shatter into a thousand fragments.

©Jim Dreaver, 2009